VOTE EARLY AND VOTE OFTEN
Malcom Lagauche
…Like every other dishonest U.S. tradition that has surfaced in the “new” Iraq (bribery, disappearance of billions of dollars, brutality, etc.), the good old American tradition of fraudulent voting is already in place in Iraq. Every side in the recent “elections” has called foul. In some instances, the prevailing party gained more votes than the number of registered voters. Nobody is happy, even the victors who stated that they should have received more votes than the b! ogus ones already accumulated. One group that has been left totally out of the picture is the Turkmen of Iraq. Today, I received a press release from the Netherlands-based Iraqi Turkmen Human Rights Research Foundation. In addition, I received a few pictures of voting shenanigans that occurred in the Kurdish area of Iraq. Evidently, many pre-teen youngsters voted, and voted more than once. The camera caught them wiping off the ink on their hands that was affixed to show they had voted. Once the hands were clean, they lined up to vote again…

The US in Iraq: New Tactic, Same Strategy
Amer Jubran
George Bush and his warmongers – Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Wolfowitz, Cheney – and their counterparts in Europe and Australia, have learned the hard way from invading Iraq that economic, political, military, intelligence, and technological superiority cannot defeat the spirit of a small number of poorly armed Iraqi resistance fighters. Thirty-three months into the occupation of Iraq, the USA and its international and local Iraqi collaborators remain without poli! tical or military control. Moreover, it is only getting worse for the invaders, as evidenced by the drastic increase in numbers of US military casualties. Not being able to hide its losses anymore, the US is working hard just to survive its predicament in Iraq…

THE KUALA LUMPUR INITIATIVE TO CRIMINALISE WAR
Kuala Lumpur Global Peace Forum
THE Kuala Lumpur Global Peace Forum of concerned peoples from all five continents UNITED in the belief that peace is the essential condition for the survival and well-being of the human race, DETERMINED to promote peace and save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, OUTRAGED over the frequent resort to war in the settlement of disputes between nations, DISTURBED that militarists are preparing for more wars, TROUBLED that use ! of armed force increases insecurity for all, TERRIFIED that the possession of nuclear weapons and the imminent risk of nuclear war will lead to the annihilation of life on earth…

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 23 December 2005
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
…US forces on Thursday depopulated an entire village west of al-Fallujah because it was “too close” to a US base. The Mafkarat al-Islam correspondent in al-Fallujah reported that US troops stormed into the village of Kartan at noon on Thursday and used tanks and armored vehicles to comb the area and forces all the villagers to ! leave their homes. The correspondent reported that more than 14 families lived in the village all of them farmers or heardsmen. On Friday the US propaganda radio station in the provincial capital of ar-Ramadi issued a statement saying that the American forces had evacuated the village because it was “too close” to the large American base in the area and because, they claimed, that rockets had been fired at the base from the village…

Iraqis March, Say Elections Were Rigged
SINAN SALAHEDDIN Associated Press Writer
Large demonstrations broke out across the country Friday to denounce parliamentary elections that protesters say were rigged in favor of the main religious Shiite coalition. Meanwhile, a lawyer for Saddam Hussein said he saw evidence that his client had been beaten. Several hundred thousand people demonstrated after noon prayers in southern Baghdad Friday, many carrying banners decrying last week’s elections. Many Iraqis outside the ! religious Shiite coalition allege that the elections were unfair to smaller Sunni Arab and secular Shiite groups…

Fresh claims of torture by Saddam’s lawyer
AP
Saddam Hussein was severely tortured by US forces, the deposed leader’s chief Iraqi lawyer, Khalil Dulaimi, said on Friday, adding he had seen the bruises (…)
“The president was tortured severely by the American forces and I saw bruise marks on his body. They are visible,” Dulaimi told Associated Press in a phone interview after landing in Jordan. “They are still torturing him psychologically.” Dulaimi said he had filed a complaint with the court on Thursday about the torture, urging it to investigate…

Language of the Heart
Cindy Sheehan
I have been in Europe for 2 weeks now. I have been toasted by the Mayor of London, Ken Livingston, and greeted by Foreign Ministers, a Vice President and members of the various Parliaments. Those stories are for another article. My highest honor both here in the States and in Europe now is meeting with the families of children murdered in George Bush’s War of Terror against the world. No matter if we all speak differently accented English, Spanish, or the heavy Glaswegian accen! t of my Scottish sister in sorrow, Rose Gentle – whose gentle-giant son, Gordon, was killed by Blair and Bush in Iraq in July of 2004 – our hearts all speak the same idiom of pain, and we sing the same lament of futile loss…

Iraq: Depleted Uranium aka Baghdad Boils?!
jouna, iraq-war.ru
There‚s a possibility that the US Department of Defense (DoD) is hiding the US casualties under a disguise of ‘Baghdad Boils‚, a disease plaguing the US troops in Iraq, claimed to be caused by the sand fly bites, but possibly by depleted uranium (DU) radiation. To explore this issue I‚ve forwarded the following article to DU experts in the world to have it checked and I‚m now publishing it as a preliminary announcement here in iraq-war.ru. I‚ll keep yo! u updated on this as soon as I hear of them (if confirmed you can‚t miss the fat mainstream headlining)…

Understanding War
Sam Hamod, Ph.D.
Real war is not like the movies. In real war, people get maimed, people cry, people smell as they die, people are afraid, people duck for cover as much as possible, people don‚t get up and dust off their clothes and say it was a scene well done˜there is no good end to war, and everyone who participates in war is maimed or killed by it˜either in body or in spirit. I say this because neither Presidents Bush or Clinton, or any of their henchmen, knew or can know what real war is li! ke…

Gospel truth
Chris Floyd, The Moscow Times
…Bush professes to believe that Jesus is the son of God, whose words are literally divine commands. Yet anyone who compares what Jesus really said to Bush’s actions in power — the abandonment of the poor, the exaltation of the rich; the dirty insider deals, the culture of corruption, the politics of smear and slander; the perversion of law to countenance murder, torture and predatory war — can readily see that this profession of faith is a monstrous deceit…

Did Israel Lead the US into the War on Iraq?
By Mitchell Plitnick, Director of Education and Policy, Jewish Voice for Peace; Joel Beinin, Professor of Middle East Studies at Stanford University; and Cecilie Surasky, Director of Communications, Jewish Voice for Peace
As the war on Iraq rages on with no end in sight, the scandals around its beginnings continue to proliferate. Because of these scandals, one question now being revisited is the role the state of Israel may have played in initiating the invasion of Ira! q. Israel‚s role is debated whenever American policy in the Middle East is discussed. This is inevitable, because Israel is America‚s key ally in the region and because the Israel-Palestine conflict is the focal point of attention for virtually anyone who cares about the Mideast. Some critics of the war on Iraq maintain that the decision to go to war was made largely to advance Israeli interests. Others maintain that Israel had nothing to do with it. The evidence suggests, however, that neither of these views is accurate…

Impeach the Liar-in-Chief
Stephen Crockett
The generation of American leaders who fought the American Revolution and crafted the United States Constitution examined the most important issues of government. They considered (1) war and peace, (2 ) the limits to government power vs. individual liberties, (3) how officeholders should be controlled by the citizenry and (4) the raising and management of public money. That generation devised impeachment to remove tyrants and corrupt officeholders from positions of publi! c power based on their experience under the government of King George. Under the present circumstances, it is likely that they would vote to impeach and remove from office George W. Bush and Dick Cheney…

Iran Attack: It‚s All Part of the New Zionist Century
Kurt Nimmo, Another day in the empire
If the Zionist state has its way, Iran will remain in the technological dark ages, or possibly share the stone age fate˜as in “bomb them back to the stone age”˜of Iraq in the wake of the Straussian neocon invasion. It‚s not simply Iran‚s alleged and as of yet unverified nukes, but also its incipient space program. “In October, a Russian rocket carried Iran‚s first spy satellite, the Sinah-1, into orbit,” reports al-Jazeera! . “While Iran‚s nuclear program is Israel‚s main concern, its space capabilities are also considered a ‘point of no return‚, which determined the actual timing of the Israeli strike. ‘The Iranians‚ space program is a matter of deep concern to us,‚ said an Israeli defense official. ‘If and when we launch an attack on several Iranian targets, the last thing we need is Iranian early warning received by satellite‚”…

Two US soldiers killed in Iraq
Xinhua
Two US soldiers were killed in Baghdad on Friday, said the US military in a statement. The soldiers, assigned to Task Force Baghdad, died when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device in Baghdad, the statement said…

Tomgram: Elizabeth de la Vega on Shooting the Moon in 2006
Tom Engelhardt & Elizabeth de la Vega
…As Congresswoman Woolsey has known all along, the most potent antidote to the obscenity of abstraction is fact. Focus on the facts. Make sure you get them right and don’t overstate your case. Talk about the lies that sent us to Iraq. Talk about the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis slaughtered, the soldiers killed and wounded, the families they’ve left behind. Don’t play the administration’s word games about tor! ture: talk about waterboarding, humiliation, and beatings. Write letters, demonstrate, make calls, send e-mails, wear t-shirts, campaign for candidates who oppose the war, join groups, organize groups, talk to anyone who will listen and even people who won’t. Advocate impeachment, push the Senate to analyze the administration’s use of pre-war intelligence, call for a special prosecutor — and tell Congress it’s time to bring the troops home. Don’t worry about the odds. What good does any of this do? The answer is we don’t know — which is exactly why we have to do it…

Italy warrants for 22 purported CIA operatives
CNN
A judge has issued European arrest warrants for 22 purported CIA operatives in connection with the alleged kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric from a Milan street in 2003, a prosecutor said Friday. Prosecutor Armando Spataro said the warrants allowed for the arrest of the suspects in any of the 25 EU member countries. Previously, Italy had issued arrest warrants for the 22 inside Italy…

Bush Impeachment Process Will Begin Early January, 2006
Rev. Bill McGinnis
Here are two scenarios for the impeachment of our dangerous, out-of-control President-King, George W. Bush. The first and most likely scenario is that Conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives will finally decide that George W. Bush has gone too far. They will then join with Congressional Democrats to impeach him on the grounds of his persistent abuse of power in violation of the Constitution. Vice President Cheney will also! be impeached on the same grounds. Conservative Republicans in the Senate will then join with Democrats to convict Bush and Cheney, and they both will be removed from office…

Various private armies still exist, threatening Iraq’s national security
Phil Sands
Fighters loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have set up a base in Samarra, a Sunni-dominated city 60 miles north of Baghdad and home to a powerful insurgent movement. The troops are part of an Interior Ministry special commando unit, based in Baghdad. But while they wear the camouflage fatigues of a government security force and receive a government salary, many of the SWAT-style team members have pledged their allegia! nce to al-Sadr and are adamant they are part of the Mahdi Army, his private militia (…) Residents of Samarra, the scene of bloody clashes between U.S. soldiers and insurgents, said they feared a Shiite militia being unleashed on the city (…) Farraj, a taxi driver, said he and other family members had watched the growing power of religious movements in Iraq with alarm. “We don’t want clerics like Sistani (Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s Shiite religious leader) or Sadr running the country as they have in Iran. We want people, Sunni and Shiite and Christian, to have freedom and not be intimidated or forced to follow what religious leaders say.”…

Does Dick Cheney know he’s evil?
Adam McKay, The Huffington Post
…Does Dick Cheney know he’s evil? I mean it. Does he occasionally look up from his breakfast of one hard boiled egg and a plate of heart pills and say to himself, “Man, I’m an evil fuck”? Bush and Cheney have presided over one of the worst runs in American history: starting a war based on lies that has cost tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions; total failure to deal with Katrina and then blaming others for that failure; basically le! galizing torture; outing a CIA spy; tax breaks for millionaires; huge no bid contracts to Cheney’s former company; a crazily-divided country that has lost the respect and trust of the world; insane trade deficits…etc, etc, etc, etc…